Dakota

A gambler (John Wayne) and his bride (Vera Ralston) help wheat farmers fight swindlers in 1871 Dakota.

Dakota should have been a much better movie. You’ve got a young but seasoned John Wayne, a descent budget, and a good supporting cast including Walter Brennan, Ward Bond, and Mike Mazurki. Unfortunately, you’ve also got a bad script and an absolutely awful leading lady in Vera Ralston.

Ralston is a pain to watch. Granted, some of the blame probably belongs to the script, which does its best to make Ralston’s character unlikable, but ultimately her and Wayne have no chemistry, a fact made all the more apparent by Wayne’s easy chemistry with everyone else in the film. Further, considering Wayne and Ralston’s characters are married from the get-go, there’s no real romance angle, and thus Ralston’s character is little more than a plot-device, one whose grating accent and ham-fisted acting only exasperate the already slow script.

Even at only 82 minutes, Dakota is far too long. The plot isn’t that far removed from John Wayne’s earlier Lone Star westerns, which ran 30 minutes shorter, and it shows. Perhaps if director Joseph Kane had trimmed the film and reduced Ralston’s role he could have salvaged something, but we’ll never know.